The Foreign Service Journal, November 2018

44 NOVEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FICTION A Banker’s Tale H.K. Deeb, CreateSpace, 2018, $10.99/paperback, $3.99/Kindle, 208 pages. Exhausted and already considering a career change, New York banker David Martinez is surprised when his usually draconian boss offers him a month’s leave at a Swiss resort. While he absolutely needs some time off, David has reservations about this obligatory holiday—for the last banker to receive the “Vitznau Bonus” never returned. In fact, the mystery surrounding the disappear- ance of Barnaby McCaskill five years earlier seems to follow David everywhere. Hadi K. Deeb, a Foreign Service officer, is currently posted in Tashkent and previously served in Mexico City, Moscow, Baku and Manila. Prior to joining the State Department, he lived in Germany for four years, including one year in Hamburg. His first novel, The Haven , was published in 2017. A Funeral in Mantova David P. Wagner, Poisoned Pen Press, 2018, $15.95/paperback, 230 pages. In this fifth book in David Wagner’s Rick Montoya Italian Mysteries series, American interpreter Rick Montoya finds himself at the center of a murder mystery after the U.S. embassy in Rome recommends his services to a wealthy Italian. An elderly fisherman was found dead, and Montoya starts collaborating with a local cop, Inspec- tor Crispi, to make sense of the killing. Rivalries between local families have always been heated, but something may have reached a breaking point over a long sought-after parcel of undeveloped land owned by the victim. Soon Montoya discov- ers a complex web of simmering family disputes, devious busi- ness intrigue and volatile questions of inheritance. David P. Wagner is a retired Foreign Service officer who spent nine years in Italy, where he learned to love all things Ital- ian. Other diplomatic assignments included Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as two hardship postings to Washington, D.C. He and his wife, Mary, live in Pueblo, Colorado. The Lady’s Last Song: The U.S. Government’s War on Billie Holiday Charles Ray, Uhuru Press, 2018, $7.95/paperback, $2.99/Kindle, 148 pages. In Jim Crow-era America, black stars often faced societal backlash, but some, such as Billie Holiday, were up against the monster itself—the U.S. government. An African-American jazz- singing woman who had the guts to perform her now-famous anti-lynching song of protest, “Strange Fruit,” she was at odds with the U.S. government for decades. In this book, Ambassador (ret.) Charles Ray presents a fictionalized account of this historically significant moment that reflects the country’s mired past of institutionalized racism and intolerance. He tells the story of Harry Jacob Anslinger, the jazz- hating and racist individual who was the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962. Formerly the Department of Prohibition, the bureau needed a new mission when prohibition ended in 1933 and, under Anslinger, the eradication of drugs became its goal. He targeted the jazz world broadly, and singer Billie Holiday, in particular, because of her drug habit. He and his men pursued her relent- lessly, determined to bring her down. A prolific writer, Charles Ray is a retired FSO and former ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe. Before beginning his Foreign Service career, Ray was in the U.S. Army for 20 years and retired in 1982 as a major. This year, in addition to The Lady’s Last Song , he published another historical novel, new volumes in his Ed Lazenby mystery series and Buffalo Soldier Western series, a collection of photographs and a guide to leadership. They are described below and in the Potpourri section of this edition of “In Their Own Write.”